Category Archives: social media

Unfriend Yourself

I got the book Unfriend Yourself by Kyle Tennant and read it this past weekend. It’s not a long book and I was actually finished with it early on Friday but decided to go ahead and take the challenge to unfriend myself for three days on social media.

The book is interesting and poses some intriguing questions on how we use social media. Tennant also lines up social media usage with Scripture. Thought provoking.

What I got from this book, other than the challenge of staying off of social media for three days, was confirmation that I’m doing it right. At least according to the book.

I love social media and I love the people I have met through twitter. My goal in life is to meet my twitter friends and make them into real life friends. I believe that I could have coffee in any part of the world with someone that I “know” from twitter. That’s a cool feeling.

As you know, twitter is my favorite in the social media realm. I have found, as the author did, that Facebook can be a little fake. And I’ve found it can also be a little mean. Mostly, I use Facebook to see photos of the #glambaby. And other people’s little kids. The photos of little kids is my favorite part of Facebook.

Tennant says that social media offers a new kind of social and intellectual environment encouraging false intimacy and feigning friendship. I can see how it could be perceived as that if you aren’t being true to yourself or your friends/followers.

If you know me at all, you know I believe in being REAL. With me, what you see is what you get. The person I am on social media is the person I will be when you meet me in real life. I think it could be very easy to try and let yourself be someone you’re not but since my ultimate goal is to meet every one of my followers in person, being real seems more practical to me.

I wrote in my book that I feel that twitter actually allowed me to be the real me. I tweet what I tweet. Then, when people meet me in real life, they expect me to be me and it’s so cool! 🙂

The one person who came to mind when I was reading this book was Afton Fisher. I love Afton and if I had not been on twitter, I am not sure I ever would have met her in real life. She is a wonderful, kind, and precious soul. She’s a fabulous mommy and wife and I love her. For real.

Afton has told me that she practices WWLD. What Would Lauri Do? Ohhhh. Oh. That always gives me pause. It’s constantly in the back of my head that, at least one person that I love and respect completely, is looking up to me. This would keep me real if nothing else did.

Tennant suggests that we make sure not to forgo in life communion with online communication. This is good advice. When I meet my twitter friends in real life I am SO delighted! It’s really the cherry on top of an already good ice cream sundae.

I think that you can use social media and not be used by it. This would be a good goal to have if you feel that you are becoming enslaved by the medium.

All in all, I think this was a good book to read. It gave me some good things to think about but mostly it confirmed that I’m using social media in a way that is well balanced. And that makes me happy.

So? Did I pop into my social media accounts these three days? I did, I cannot tell a lie. I got an email with three direct messages from a friend who wanted me to call her. While I didn’t go into twitter itself, I did see the direct messages in email form. I also logged into Facebook so I could see a photo of my son’s birthday donuts which were cool and also to tell Beth Hoffman that I really love her new book because I couldn’t wait until Monday. Also, I checked into foursquare today. But, for me, mostly I did a great job on the challenge.

I can’t wait for Monday to get back to normal! 🙂

Carpe-ing the java @CoffeeCON2013 style

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Yesterday, was CoffeeCON 2013 (@coffeecon2013) and it was amazing!

Before going to CoffeeCON, I was finally able to meet up with Ruthann (@RAWiesner) for breakfast. She took me to a place where they bring donuts to the table like they bring rolls or chips and salsa at other places.

How can you not love a place like that? I had an amazing frittata with spinach, bacon and tomatoes. Yum!

Then it was off to the event du jour: CoffeeCON!

Just opening the door you know was fabulous because you could smell all of the different coffee offerings.

When we got to CoffeeCON, we found my twitter friend, Debra (@debramariem).

Debra is terrific, too, and we had fun hanging out together, visiting the vendor booths, the classes and our other twitter friends,

Coffee Nate (@CoffeeNate) and Robert Caruso (@fondalo) who were bloggers at the conference.

One of the things I was most looking forward to was talking to the roasters. There were several different options there including a woman who was roasting beans with a heat gun (yes, like the one from Lowe’s) and a guy who had repurposed his hot air popcorn popper to roast coffee. He was very excited with his roaster and was cute to listen to.

There were two roasters, though, that had machines that seem like what I would use to roast coffee which I believe is the next frontier for me.

We watched coffee demos and attended a couple of classes.

I was really taken with the siphon coffee maker and think I’m going to have to have one of those. I was sad that we didn’t get to see the Turkish Coffee demo. She had some kind of a water issue but I did get the instructions for making the coffee so will be trying that at home soon. 🙂

Right before I left, I thanked the show producer, Kevin Sinnot (@coffeekevin), for his fabulous event. He wanted to interview me because I had come from Oklahoma for the show. I did that and said my goodbyes.

It was such a great time. Great coffee, great people. I can’t wait to return next year and bring/meet more friends. Will you join me? 🙂

My crazy mixed up day

#SocialCV

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A little over a month ago, I saw a tweet from @ValaAfshar saying that his company, Enterasys was going to be hiring a senior social media strategist.

And? So? Big deal. A lot of companies are realizing that they need to get into the social media game and are doing the same.

Except there was a difference with this position. Enterasys planned to do their recruiting through social media, using each candidate’s social CV. Interesting!

At that point, I wasn’t sure what Enterasys did. Vala and I have been following each other on twitter for a while now. I remember connecting with him for the first time about the NBA Draft. Vala was going to the Draft as a guest of the Celtics. Color me green and not because that’s the Celtic’s color!

When I saw him eating cheeseburgers on the Patriot’s team plane, I remained a little green. Cheeseburgers are my favorite food! Oh, and I love football. 🙂

So, when I saw Vala’s tweet about the job with his company, it caught my eye. When I saw how the process would be conducted, I was even more intrigued and knew I wanted to be part of this first (that I know of) social media job hiring process.

I’ve really been trying to find my place since I gave up directing the pageant. Trying to figure out what I want to be when I grow up. 🙂 I know I want to work in Social Media. I feel like I was born just waiting for social media to happen. I’ve been approached by some really cool people with some really great opportunities but nothing has felt just right. Yet.

So I talked to David about this possibility. Since he is mostly coming and going and just needs to be by an airport, moving to the Boston area would work just fine. Added bonus, one of my best friends, Debbie, lives right in North Andover about 10 minutes away from Enterasys. Cherry on top.

I decided to go for it!

My first concern was that, by choice, I have no klout score and a klout score of 60 is required. As you know if you read this blog (or listen to me much) I deleted my klout profile a couple of algorithms ago because it seemed to me that klout was going to try and turn me into a mean girl and penalize me for talking to folks they deemed “less influential” than I. Well, I am gifted by my relationships with EVERYONE I interact with. Liz Strauss, one of my connections on twitter, wrote a great blog post that describes pretty much the same thought process I had when I was considering deleting my klout profile. But,simply said, I’m no one’s mean girl.

I considered reactivating my klout profile but I quickly discarded that idea. It didn’t feel right to me to change who I was and what I believe in for a job. I mean, hopefully I’m going to be at this job for a while and they will see the real me so why fake it?

You know how I am about being R.E.A.L! 🙂

I commented on the blog that I didn’t have a klout score but Vala told me it was okay, I have clout and that would be considered.

I do have provable clout. The coolest example of that was my trip to Washington D.C. as a superfan guest of Eight O’Clock Coffee. The two story suite I was given by Doubletree is my second favorite.

Kred score. Until around a month before I heard about the Enterasys job, I think I had been to Kred once. Just to check it out when people were talking about it as a klout replacement. I sort of dismissed it because that’s exactly what it looked like to me, More of the klout same. But towards the end of January, Kred started awarding badges to their top 1% Kredsters. I went to look and see what the fuss was all about and my score was pretty high. Then I wondered why I didn’t get a badge. And then I did. 😉

A candidate’s Kred score must be 725 with an outreach of 8 in order to qualify for this position. Mine was 845 with an outreach of nine. I just checked, though, and my score is now 859. So, not sure if Kred will ultimately ever be important to me other than for this purpose but it was kind of cool to see it rise 15 points in a month. Of course that got me wondering what it takes to move the outreach score up but I’m just not going to get all caught up in that. 😉

1,000 twitter followers was required. I had more than that and in the past month I’ve gained a lot more. Some of them, I know, are related to the #SocialCV but I do hope they’ll stick around even if they don’t pick me for the position. I like them!

Next on the list:

Consideration will be made to those applicants who have published works

regarding social media, peer influence, digital marketing, and related thought leadership.

Well alrighty then! I finished my first book Pageant Savvy, Social media for the savvy pageant gal in February. They were delivered into my hot little hand on February 19th, the day after this recruitment period started. Talk about your good timing! Not only is my little book pretty (so pretty!), it adds to my #SocialCV and my qualifications for this job.

An IT background would be preferred, and I don’t have that, but it’s not required. Working alongside David in the telecommunications field for all of these years, I do have more of an understanding of IT than I otherwise might have. [Insert paragraph break here. WordPress won’t do it. ;-)]

And there it is. The last day of the recruitment process was yesterday and it looks like there are some great candidates. I’m excited to be one of them.

In the past month, I’ve not only learned a lot about Enterasys but I’ve learned more about social media and about myself. I wish all of the candidates the best and wish Enterasys the best in choosing the right candidate for the position. While I hope I’m the one, if I’m not, the world is my oyster and the social media realm is large and growing. How exciting! 🙂

Best. Quote. Ever.